a fathomless void

a weight that can only be felt

by breathing in the wrong kind of ozone

in a desolate universe, unraveling into

rust and dirt and long-ago bleached bones

a single pair of footsteps walk

the path, beaten down by phantoms

and mysteries hanging on an unused crucifix

the rearview mirror beckons minds on

but….onto where? onto the myriad lies that

stumble and fall back into rubbles

bruising careless feet and leaving contrived

wishes of contrition and softer mumbles

and alone—alone the blackened eyes atone,

alone the bastard hair sheds like broken roses,

alone the body dances until imminent decomposition,

alone. the man seeks, but finds no symphony amid the empty chorus.

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Andromeda

Can anyone reveal the bloodstains

Hiding underneath my torn lips…

Would anyone kiss it all away?

.

My thoughts are arrested at gunpoint

As if they were guilty of something—

.

But the crimes hanging my crown

Heavy on one side are nothing new

I’ve already paid for them time and time again

But why am I still being punished?

.

I can’t escape the incarceration from

What everyone else calls their brain

Try as I may to scrape off the slivers of light,

A jailbreak only makes for broken bones

And a rather crueler atonement…

.

I’m crossing thin lines inside my head

And all over my skin, precarious and fatal

Until humility becomes my illness

.

And manipulation my only chapel of truth

.

For I am no longer human; rather

I am simply a galaxy of constellated scars

.

But not a single one coruscates any longer

And my flesh becomes just another dead star

Extinguished quietly in the infinite darkness.

Don’t Turn The Tables Sweetheart, You’re Gonna Dizzy Yourself Sick

Well, she’s not bleeding on the ballroom floor
Just for the attention, ‘cause that’s just ridiculously odd
Well, she sure is going to get it, here’s the setting
Fashion magazines line the walls now, the walls line the bullet holes
Have some composure and where is your posture? Oh, no, no!
You’re pulling the trigger, pulling the trigger all wrong…

~*~

You act like you’ve got a pretty laugh stuck in your ragged throat

Proud of the way you dirty your skin, proud of the way you gloat

About the veins, they’re just veins, they’re just another empty sea

I don’t want to swim, I don’t want to sink, I don’t want to censor me

.

Can you see the way I twist my hair into a noose that I’ll never hang?

Well the knots have hurt my fingers and for a moment my hands stung

All this beauty left to be romantic about, but sometimes nature is a bore

The bayside’s wayside in screaming trees, sometimes nature is a whore

.

When we did it, it was funny, it was temporary, it was just a tragedy

Coming from the cheap seats and you clapped for the longest irony

Now it’s your turn, it’s not funny, it’s forever, it’s a bruised symphony

We paid the balcony scene just to watch a charcoal sob for a penny

.

And your lips spill with attention and gush that you don’t want any

Paint the crooked crucifix on your pallid cheeks with bitter and honey

Now all the hypocrites adore you, blood-type A of sycophantic rude

Play a victim with a rifle to their shoulders, act as if it’s how you should

.

Now the trigger smiles so happy, does that bullet taste like sweet candy?

Do the fucking polaroids show off the best sides of your broken inhumanity?

Make us sorry that this reality didn’t fit your peach-twill dress and sanity

Was it your idea to put the slit in your throat so you can pretend that it’s originality?

~*~

Give me envy, give me malice, give me your attention!
Give me envy, give me malice, baby, give me a break!
When I say shotgun, you say wedding: shotgun, wedding, shotgun, wedding!
She didn’t choose this role, but she’ll play it and make it sincere
So you cry, you cry (give me a break) but they believe it from the tears
And the teeth right down to the blood at her feet…

Pretty Little Thing

Right before you fly you fix the broken wings of
Everything that carries you forward now
Patching up the holes remaining in your word now
I start to question what is real or not, pick apart my every thought
Dig in to a dark place, bury the thought of your face…

~*~

A wish to avoid a blatant lie

To a spine with broken bones

Waiting for retaliation in the

Shape of a forsaken home

.

As mirrors began to whisper

About the drama that unfolded

It all tasted like high tension

Keeping her weak wings faded

.

Fingers forward, burying blame

Twitching petals, her lavish name

Draped in linen, maiden serenity

Masquerading a sorrowful calamity

.

Of an oil painting melting away

In the warmth of this winter fire

Lost palettes ebbing and arching

An abandoned masterpiece dire

.

Grim faces arrested in quiet disgust

As snow fell and tainted mordant black

Onto the pallbearers dressed in drab

Carrying away an eternal chill in her heart.

~*~
Pretty little thing, you know the way to make me weak
But I’ll stand on my own feet
Shame on you for hitting where it most hurts
Shame on me for listening
Pretty little thing, I think you better turn away
My attention is ending…

Her Hypodermic Heart

I’m fading away off some kind of drug
Maybe it’s lust, maybe it’s love
I know I said I’d straighten out a week ago
I’m feeling though, about to reach my peak, you know
The city’s got me falling off
I’m fading away, I’m losing my head…

~*~

She’s the girl of my dreams

But her nightmares come cheap

She’s got Xans for a goodnight kiss

And fictional love for my lifeline

Then I was told to stay the fuck away

But baby, my head lies all the time

.

If you’re in a rush, then stop running

You’re going too fast, the stopwatch tickin’

Mending my bones, but I’m still broken

Sayin’ I adore you when the ocean gets you

Blue and cold all the way to your mouth

Need another shot to keep it right, she knew

.

But the train stations stopped working

And I’m the only passenger left in red lights

Passing by the metro, keep that devil mania

It’s getting messy, and she’s gonna get me

Delete me from her fingers like I wasn’t there yet

Confuse my addictions as if I need more, yeah

.

Hit me twice and hit me hard, let me feel that smoke

Break me down and break me fast, let me feel my heart choke

Crash my central nervous system and keep the anxiety real

I’ve got some time to fuck around, so won’t you let me feel?

‘Cause she’s always been a sweet voice at the back of my mind

But only whenever I close my eyes and let the pills rewind.

~*~

‘Cause you’ve been steady
Crawling on your knees again
You need a friend
And I’ve been on the pills again
Baby’s only twenty-three
Dancing under lights since she was seventeen
Her brain’s flooded with ketamine…

Simple Explanation

Driven by passion, outward away from family and friends
But what they can’t see is that everyday I’m drowning in a sea
Of faces that I miss so desperately with each flashing countenance—
And the weight of their absence has brought me more than once to tears
I wake from sleep violently only to witness those lives and faces
Disappear slowly behind me…

~*~

I.) Mismatched Cultures And Dead Parents

He’s got a bullet where his brain should be

And broken toys where a heart should beat

The stripes on his sweater had begun to fade

The nostalgic photographs lied except for one

So he’s turned to smoke to keep himself awake

And he’s turned to secrets to keep himself alive

But it wasn’t enough to save him from phantoms

Now he’s carried on the wrong side of the casket

No one saw it coming; no one can figure him out

Whispers of self-sacrifice, but quiet murder hung

Of the boy who played with fire but didn’t put it out

It was a mystery—it didn’t make sense to anyone but him.

~*~

II.) False Cancer And A Secret Trip To Rio

A dying man seconds away from his final breath

And his wife by the bedside that couldn’t take any

Collapsed on the floor, the debilitated cried for help

Of what seemed to be a miracle, a feigned recovery

They would die for the other, just another ancient lie

There’s no love without guilt and no guilt without love

The operating table was prepped for a wrongful death

To save the irreparable, it’s too late for her, but not him

The grief was mistaken and the medicine was not taking

All because of a surreptitious slip to a beach without sun

He lived to tell the tale of how she flatlined before his eyes

Under premises of a truth confessed too late, and what it had done.

~*~

We savored the taste of our sweet youth
And now, with calloused hands, gather the remaining fruit
To go any farther, we must endure further pains
Skinned, mashed, and finally strained
Fermenting in the time spent away
Only to return with a fine vintage
To cheers to the health of those who stayed.

scar tissues

Baby, pour over, tell me, are we concrete?
What would you do without
My perfect company to your undressed spine?
And I can hear you drag behind my car by your broken legs
(Swallowing stitches in her sleep as she)
Stole my only view, may I never blink…

~*~

i am your bare bones

and the words that can fracture it

a faked death, disappearance

in the lonely asphalt ash

so undress my bad memories

take off that pretty, pretty, pink dress

and show me the lacerations

the lingering bruises on my spine

of your decayed entertainment

modern anxiety at its brutality finest

and tell me again how bad

all of my imminent injuries were

until i can feel enough

until i am enough

don’t hesitate on backburners

simply make me believe

that the chemicals in my open veins

serotonin, endorphins, tryptophan—

are not just a lie you made up…

like the raised welts on

my broken, praying wrists

nor the unrecoverable night i came to you,

sobbing and begging for gravity

to come drag me under

underwater, underground,

because i was desperate for it to be over

but we crashed in abstract strokes

only one pair of lungs breathed again;

a sordid altercation.

you’re a lucid dreamer, love

and i have an eidetic memory

and this damn world has selective hearing

over gasoline and sunshine

and the difference that it makes

when you light the aphotic city on fire

like a paradox under my skin.

this is my mass hysteria

although i’m calm at the altar veneer

and absent blank, my mind is an

apocalyptic wasteland

and i’m the sole survivor.

so surround my lavender hands

and black out the soft sodium streetlights

and patch up these obscene bones

and simply say the words

to make me forget.

~*~

Listen, I’m the one who made you
I’ll be the one who brings you down
But this will be the last time…

The Girl With The White Bracelets

Oh, pretty girl, keep batting your eyes
‘Cause when you breathe you lie, lie
Oh, pretty girl, you better think twice
‘Cause second chances are rarer than I
How can we forget who we have become?
I’ll give it all up, please wake up
Every breath you take is a lie…

~*~

She asked for death, and who was I to refuse

She got sick of the radio and wanted the noose

She didn’t want another dance, just the last one

She sold all the bullets she had just to buy a gun

.

She was sick and she was tired of feeling pathetic

She didn’t like the smell of the hospital antiseptics

She was the class-act patient but she was no victim

She fixed her wounds but got worse off and broken

.

She screamed for mercy to taste all their cruelty

She was running away from all their emergency

She emerged from hell, to be thrown back again

She asked for demise at the tip of her bloody pen

.

She tried every method and every single execution

She went by the blades, gas, a wrongful transfusion

She beat her body in bruised painting of a night sky

She didn’t look for any help and nobody asked why

.

She was the girl that I still dream about in my head

She was the girl I wanted to save from this deep red

She was the girl begging for this chance, but instead

She’s the girl who is restrained and laying on my bed.

~*~

How did you ever see me broken?
Well, you forced me to find out everyday
Did you ever see me open?
Well, you forced me to find out everyday…

Mad Mary Lennox

I still remember the world
From the eyes of a child
Slowly those feelings
Were clouded by what I know now—
I still remember the sun
Always warm on my back
Somehow it seems colder now…

~*~

You were the tears I could never release.

I am imprisoned for centuries in an impenetrable ribcage, feeling the lemongrass harshly piercing my calloused feet but never allowing my deprived senses to take in their ethereal fragrance, holding blossoms by their fragile throats and quietly wishing for their efflorescent scarlet to return and splash colour on my filthy grey dress again, and forevermore shackled and watching the suspended horizon; but a mere intangible memory playing tricks on my open lips.

It was beautifully haunting. My demented secret garden.

You alone held the key to the concealed gates. That particular key was crudely carved from roses and bones, finely forged of romance and blood, chiseled from my consumed heart and threaded with my vulnerable veins, but akin to the overflowing ocean of the tears trapped within my tired, pondering eyes, you released me not.

But will I despair? Never. I shall merely smile at your vicious cruelty and wait for patience with all the grace and forgiveness the pallid moon has adorned me with. I’ll peacefully sleep on my bed of fallen feathers and butterfly ashes, and I shall awake again the next day, my marred body still glimmering in a breathtaking fairy tale iridescence, to tend to my own share of bruised paradise and to sing my laments to the ardent stars in the missing sky once more.

Because this exquisite garden shares my every pain, my solitary desire, my one secret, and not simply the very secrecy itself. This sanctuary is mine to hold in eternal memoriam, and in an infinite someday, these silver chains will rust off and unfetter, as the reckless revolution of this damned planet will halt and reverse, away from the sun. And when that happens, you will find yourself starving for sweet freedom and clawing at the iron bars haplessly, forever banished in my grotesque heaven, where all the scathing thorns bear your broken name and all the flowers wilt at the very despicable thought of your nonexistent soul.

And you shall weep. And I, finally, along with you.

~*~

Where has my heart gone?
Trapped in the eyes of a stranger
Oh, I, I want to go back to
Believing in everything
I still remember.

Secret Catastrophe

i am lacklustre—

butterfly wings devoid

of floral-rose shade

lost within asteroids

.

i don’t seek cold seas

or gift-wrapped love

i wished desperate throes

from broken-bent doves

.

only pain lit in purple

unveiled under a night sky

all-consuming death—wanders

in my azure-blinded eye.